Lovecraft country lesson series
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON SERIES
We've been inspired by the show Lovecraft Country to create a series of classroom-ready lessons related to topics featured on the show! Our lessons center Black voices, Black history and Black struggle and like everything we do, we hope these lessons can inspire young people to go out and make a better world. We are experienced classroom educators who have learned a lot about teaching "outside the textbook" over the years and we are dedicated to bringing our students real, relevant and crucially needed info about important topics. If you've ever wondered "Why didn't they teach me about this?!" while watching, check out these lessons we’ve created to go deeper and learn more! We will be updating these lessons soon. Contact us if you’d like to create lessons with us!
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LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON SERIES
INTRODUCTION:
“The boom of Afrofuturist and black speculative fiction which dominates African American literature today, can trace its roots back to stories written by authors like Pauline Hopkins and even W.E.B. DuBois in the early twentieth century. Science fictional otherworldliness, futurity, and the potential of imagination are as far reaching within black American culture as the jazz of Sun Ra, the hip-hop of Outkast, the hopes for utopian communities of MOVE and the Black Panthers, and the unflinching optimism of slave folklore about people who could fly….” Read more on our blog!
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON 1
MEET THE REAL LETITIA LEWIS:
BLACK WOMEN FREEDOM FIGHTERS WHO DID NOT BACK DOWN
By Peta Lindsay
Letitia Lewis is not the only Black woman who has faced racist white terror and refused to back down. In this lesson, inspired by episode 3 of Lovecraft Country, “Holy Ghost,” students will learn about the reality of white supremacist terrorism in the Black freedom struggle. They will read first-hand accounts from Black women freedom fighters, who have faced white supremacist threats and violence in their communities, and still kept fighting for justice. This lesson will highlight the lives and work of organizers Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Gloria Richardson.
Students will conduct mock interviews with these historical women, answering the questions: How did white supremacist terror affect Black communities in movements for justice? How did Black women keep fighting for justice in the face of that terror?
Read the full lesson introduction by the creator here
Detailed multimedia slides presentation to guide this lesson, is available here.
Full lesson plan with primary sources, graphic organizers and activity handouts is available here.
Primary Source Documents & Handouts available here.
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON 2
GHOSTS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE:
EXPLORING THE GOTHIC IN AFRICAN- AMERICAN LITERATURE
Lovecraft Country effectively uses the horror genre to explore and expose the historic horrors of the Black experience in the United States of America. The book and movie series come from a legacy of African American writers and creatives who have combined elements of folklore, American gothicism and magical realism to depict the African American experience through nonfiction (narratives of enslavement, memoirs, and autobiography, etc.) fiction (novels, short stories, novellas, etc.), poetry and drama. Toni Morrison asked, “What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?” This lesson is designed to use Lovecraft Country as an entry-point for exploration of the Gothic in African American literature through a survey of folklore, narratives of enslavement and fictional texts from the 19th century through the post-modern period.
Read the full lesson introduction by the creator here
This Lesson contains:
Detailed multimedia slides presentation to guide this lesson, available here.
Full lesson plan with primary sources, graphic organizers and activity handouts, available here.
Just the handouts:
Handout 1: Lovecraft Country Trailer Anticipation Guide
Handout 2: Beloved Excerpt Guided Literature Analysis
Handout 3: Stranger Than Fiction: Distinguishing Between Nonfiction Accounts
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON 3
COLORISM: THE COMPLEXITY OF COMPLEXION
As we watch half-sisters, Letitia Lewis and Ruby Baptiste, reconnect in episode 1 and navigate living together in episode 3, as a member of the audience, you can’t help but feel and witness the unspoken differences in how they are both portrayed and how they are perceived as Black women in the Lovecraft Country universe.
In this lesson, students will learn about the origins of colorism and the ways in which colorism continues to impact our society today. They will read the original text that coined the term “colorism” as well as get a brief history lesson on its social and psychological foundations within the American psyche. Students will also get opportunities to draw parallels to more contemporary manifestations of colorism, especially those exacerbated by social media platforms. The lesson will culminate with the conscious creation of media that centers dark-skinned Black voices as an effort to counteract preferential depictions of light skin in popular media.
Read the full lesson introduction by the creator here
Detailed multimedia slide presentation to guide this lesson, available here.
Full lesson plan with primary sources, graphic organizers and activity handouts, available here.
Just the Handouts:
Handout 1: Defining Colorism using an excerpt from
“In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden” by Alice WalkerHandout 2: Anti-Colorism Campaign
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON 4
"THERE ARE PEOPLE BURIED UNDER THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE.”
Lovecraft Country does a good job of peppering its story with historical details, tying its supernatural horror to the very real horrors faced by BIPoC in the United States. This presents a great opportunity to dive deeper into these historical references, to learn more about the histories which haunt our present. Just as the house of Leti Lewis is haunted by the ghosts of those Black people victimized by an inhuman doctor in the show, so too is the house of American medicine haunted by the very active ghosts of racist history and the vicious, unethical experimentation which defines so much of its past.
By exploring the racist philosophies at the foundations of science, medicine, and American culture, we will be able to better understand the troubled paths our ancestors trod to bring us here and by exploring the often forgotten history of where racism meets medicine, we will better see the real location of where we have ended up. The lesson uses discussion of familiar and unfamiliar historical figures, analysis of historical philosophies and beliefs, and imaginative interaction between students and history to provide more living feeling to moments within that history. .
View the full lesson plan with primary sources, graphic organizers and activity handouts, available here.
Detailed multimedia slide presentation to guide this lesson, available here.
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY LESSON 5
WHITEY ON THE MOON:
THE POLITICS OF GIL SCOTT-HERON’S POETRY
Episode 2 of Season 1 of Lovecraft Country is titled “Whitey’s On the Moon,” an allusion to Gil Scott-Heron’s song/poem, “Whitey On the Moon.” Heron’s piece critiques the USA’s seeming indifference to the suffering of its citizens as it raced to land on the moon during the Cold War. In the episode, we hear “Whitey On the Moon” in the background as the character Samuel conducts a ritual to exploit Atticus’s blood.
Through this lesson, students will explore the political poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and the Black Arts Movement through poetry and informational texts. Students will analyze a poem by Gil Scott-Heron. Then using Scott-Heron’s poetry, the informational texts provided in this lesson and external texts of their choosing, students will compose found poems.
Full lesson plan featuring poetry by the artist available here.
Detailed multimedia slides presentation to guide this lesson, is available here.
Handouts with compelling texts, graphic organizers and discussion questions for students available here.
